Keepin' It Riz-eal

   A lot of people hate the new Welcome Screen, but not me. I look at it as a new toy. Sure, it's not a gram of cocaine or anything... but it kills some time.

   If you don't like what's on your welcome screen, you can change it around a bit. Just look at it long enough, and you'll find the "change this screen" button, or whatever they call those things you click on.

   I went with a Black Voices Welcome Screen, mostly for laughs. Even though I have some Portuguese blood, my skin is whiter than this font you are reading. Still, it'll amuse me for a few weeks... after which I'll use the Spanish one or something.

   I managed to find the Unexpected Benefit, though. Black Voices Welcome Screens are the only one with a Sports section.

   Sure, it's a Black view of sports.... but all the sports I like are mostly black anyhow, and the white sports- golf, tennis, hockey- have just enough black folk playing them (Serena, Tiger, Fuhr, etc...) to satisfy my need for information on them ... which is basically negligible anyhow.

   Still, I only had a Black Voices Welcome Screen for 10 seconds before I had several good articles to read while I blew off church for the 500th straight week. Here's the 411, dawg:

AOL Black Voices: The Player's Life -- Behind the Scenes of the Hip-Hop Sports World at BV Sports - Brandy, Quentin Richardso...

- Doh!

   Things seem to have gone downhill for Quentin Richardson and Brandy, who were engaged about this time last year. My sources tell me that the engagement is Off like mosquito repellent.

   Brandy has a last name, but neither myself nor anyone on my Buddy List can think of what it is. It was going to be "Richardson," but that doesn't look like it's going to be happening any time soon... unless she's working through the NBA in reverse abecedarian order- in which case, Jason Richardson had better watch his Nuggets.

   Q-Rich lived up to his nickname by icing the R+B diva to the tune of ELEVEN karats last year- a solid million dollar ring that reportedly really pissed off Vanessa Bryant. 11 karats feeds a LOT of bunnies, kids... 

   Brandy had to actually move the ring from left to right hands several times a day, as the scrawny right arm looked unattractive when compared to the Big Poppa Pump-sized gun she developed lugging that ill rock around entirely on the traditional engagement ring hand.

   This is on some he said/she said BS... I've heard everything from Infidelity to Bothersome Mothers as the straw that broke the camel's back. Brandy may have also disagreed with the Los Angeles/Phoenix/New York odyessy that Q's last 12 months have been.

   At that rate, she'd be living in Minnesota, Portland, or Milwaukee in a few years, and there's nothing glamorous about walking around in a ski jacket when you're not skiing, being hit by Mount St. Helens lava, or having Serbian neighbors.

( "... raisin' up off the cot ") 

   Alicia Keys doesn't take that kind of s***, and Brandy sure as Hell isn't gonna... especially from the NBA's second best Richardson.

 

AOL Black Voices: BV Sports Feature Programming - Lester Still in The Chase

 

(It really IS my car, officer!)

- Contrary to what my uninformed supposition led me to believe, there are indeed a couple of black guys driving those NASCARs around.

   The South is blacker than the rest of the United States, and it should not, on the surface, seem that unusual to see them involved in- despite the fact that people up here love it, too- what is a predominantly Southern Institution.

   Then again, the KKK is a Southern Institution as well, and they probably don't have a lot of Sir Mix-A-Lot playing on the juke box in the Klan bar.

   While blacks are as into cars as any other American (many of my students were entirely car-focused... even before they were licensed to drive one or wealthy enough to own one, which was often how they ended up in my school), the whole NASCAR scene seems a little too Waylon Jennings-esque for even Republican-voting blacks.

   Well, somebody better get a really baggy sheet and hood, because here comes Bill ("Mo") Lester.

   NASCAR isn't stupid. Any huge company that makes no effort to attract 15% of the United States into their fandom won't be huge for long. Magic Johnson has been brought in, and someone who I believe is a Poston cousin is in the mix somewhere.

   They even run Drive For Diversity- which aims to not only get black people (and Hispanics, women, gays- anyone you can't picture actually being in the crowd) in the stands, but into the cars themselves. They run  a training program that graduated 8 people this year.

   Bill Lester drives the race trucks, which - given the 99:1 front end weight ratio- must be hilarious to watch. He has the backing of both Toyota and Bill Davis Racing, which appears in the article like Bill is a pretty good name to have painted all over your truck.

   Bill is not the first brother on the track in NASCAR's history. The splendidly-named Willy T. Ribbs wasthe first Indy 500 racer with sharecropping descendants when he Started His Engine in 1991, and was the first black full-time CART series driver...whatever the f**** that is. It looks good on a resume, I guess.

   Another guy with a cool name, former Morehouse grad George Mack (this is the guy who should be driving the trucks... tell me Mack Truck wouldn't buy this dude a rig, even if he were as blue as a Smurf), scored the highest brother-driven Indy finish ever- a not-too-shabby 17th place in 2001. He is also Indy's first full time Soul Rider.

   His catchphrase isn't "I make people say 'F*** Burger King,' and start calling me the Big Mac," but it should be.

   The one black racer who can actually lead visitors to his home into a trophy room is (or maybe was... I have no idea) Wendell Scott, who won a NASCAR race in Jacksonville in 1963. Both Lester and Mack look like pretty good bets to win something at some point in their careers... and the good thing about that is, unlike the PGA, if Mack makes everyone eat fried chicken like Fuzzy Zoeller may be worried about after the race, it won't even be noticed.

   These are Southerners, remember... they'd be more upset if my lily-white ass won a race and made everyone eat (and finish) their cauilflower.

   Diecast Dude and the Scottish racer guy would no doubt tell me that even a Race Truck victory would be a significant feather in the CAT cap of any racer, black or white. You can- although I don't have the link handy- wager money offshore on the probability that a black man will win the US Presidency before a black man wins the Daytona 500.

   Either way, I hope a speeding pickup is involved.

- I know a black guy in Monponsett- a carpenter- who drives a truck. While I never saw this in person, it is said that NO ONE rides in the front with him... except for his 130 pound Rottweiler, "Pooh Bear."

   This stipulation is broken for no one- even his wife. "She stopped asking to go down to Hosea's with me not long after I introduced this policy," he is said to say. The dog also makes for a very effective anti-theft device while Earl discusses the matters of the day- all by himself-  with the other small-towners in the tavern.

   If you ever see a truck driving down Rte 14 in Pembroke with a shivering woman holding on for dear life in the truck bed, say "hi" to Earl for me.

(NOW who's riding in the back, Earl??)

- Since the Irish are the blacks of Albion's Empire, I can work this line in:

"Clout" is when your hometown football team plays a California team, and- rather than making the New Englanders wait till 4- they make everyone in San Diego get up before 10 to watch it.

   San Diego must have no Irish population at all. If they started NFL games at 9:30 AM here, people would be starting their pre-game drinking while it's still technically Friday in Asia.